"You think he hit his head?" Sarah asked, her voice quivering. She nodded to indicate the tall Empire fence only a couple feet from where Manny lay. "You think he tried to climb that fence and fell and hit his head?"
"I don't know what to think, Sarah." He aimed the flashlight at the fence, then at a spot just on the other side of it; something gleamed dully in the light. "You see that?"
Sarah nodded. "What is it?"
"It's the butt of my rifle."
"What's it doin' in there, Clyde?"
"I don't know what it's doin' in there. Manny'll tell us, soon's he comes around." He leaned over and put his hands under Manny's shoulders. He noticed, then, the slight, almost warm breeze moving around them. "You ready for some work, Sarah, 'cuz I can't carry him by myself, he's too damned bigâ"
"Clyde," Sarah cut in, her voice low. He looked up and saw her nod at the fence. "Clyde, someone's over there behind the fence."
He turned his head, looked; he saw nothing. "C'mon, Sarah," he said harshly, agitated. "Give me a hand." He pulled Manny to a sitting position. "I need your helpâ"
"Gimme the flashlight, Clyde. Someone's over there!"
"No there ain't, Sarah . . ."
In one fluid motion she pulled the flashlight from his pocket, aimed it at the fence and flicked it on.
Her scream made him stand bolt upright; it pushed adrenalin through his veins.
She screamed again and dropped the flashlight. She turned, ran.
Clyde turned his entire body very slowly, almost mechanically toward the fence.
He looked.
He saw nothing.
"And there ain't no blood," he heard. "Far's I can see." The illogic of his fear told him,
It's an echo, a kind of echo
, because the voice had been his voice: And then.
"What's it doin' in there, Clyde?" Sarah's voice.
"And there ain't no blood, far's I can see."
He saw movement. Shadows moving in the darkness beyond the fence. "Ba-na-na peels and melon rinds," he heard. "Ba-na-na peels and mel-on rinds." And the shadows and voices drifted slowly off, into the small stand of woods that crowded up to the fence.
He turned hurriedly back to his brother-in-law, lifted him, put him on his shoulders in a rough approximation of a fireman's carry. He didn't stop to wonder where his strength was coming from.
At the car, he put Manny down on the back seat.
Sarah was in the front. "Shit!" she murmured. "Shit! It won't start. Shit!" Clyde looked. She was sitting stiffly in the driver's seat, both hands tight on the wheel. She couldn't be making an attempt to start the car, he realized, because she didn't have the keys.
"Sarah, are you okay?"
"Shit, it won't start!" she said again.
He pulled the keys from Manny's pants pockets, leaned over the back of the front seat, put his hands firmly on Sarah's shoulders. "Move over, Sarahâmove over!" She let go of the steering wheel. "Shit, it won't start!" she said again.
"Move over, Sarah," he repeated, soothingly now. "We got to get outa here, Sarah."
She allowed him to slide herâwith effortâto the passenger's side. He climbed to the front, put the key in the ignition. And noticed again the heavy, pervasive odor of gasoline.
Punctured gas tank
, he knew, and he hoped there was enough gas left in the tank to get them to a hospital.
He turned the ignition on and listened as the Sears Diehard cranked the engine frantically. He heard a heavy, muffled thumping noise from the back of the car; the car seemed to lift slightly at the same time. He checked the rearview mirror. What was all that light? he wondered. Was it sunrise, already?
T
he children moved as one away from the flames. They stopped quickly and, again as one, realized that there was no danger at this distance, only light, and warmth, just as the sun produced, and it delighted them.
But soon they felt pain, too. It arched toward them from within the car like a quickly moving red mist. And, still as one, they fled from it, away from the fence, to the various places within the stand of woods where they slept.
By sunrise, the fire was dead.
From
The Penn Yann Post Gazette
, November 4:
VOLUNTEER FIRE CHIEF KILLED IN FREAK ACCIDENT
Penn Yann Volunteer Fire Chief Clyde Watkins, 49, his sister, Sarah Kent, 40, and her husband, Manfred Kent, 43, all were killed early Saturday morning in what Police Chief John Hastings calls, "one of the weirdest and most tragic accidents I've seen in recent years." According to Hastings, a car driven by Watkins was traveling north on Sullivan's Road, a little-used gravel road off Route 43, ten miles from Penn Yann, when it apparently sideswiped a pickup truck traveling in the same direction, and then burst into flames. The driver is thought to have been Mrs. Kent, whose body was found between the truck and the car. Manfred Kent's body was found in the back seat of the car. According to Hastings, "After the accident, Mrs. Kent may have left the pickup truck to help her brother and her husband, then was overcome by the intense heat and smoke."
All three bodies were very badly burned. Identification of Watkins and of Manfred Kent had to be accomplished from dental records.
Clyde Watkins lived all his life in Penn Yann. After graduating from the Penn Yann Central High School he served six years in the Marine Corps . . .
J
anice McIntyre thought this would be the last warm day of the year. She checked the outdoor thermometer, under the kitchen window; sixty-eight degrees. She tapped it. Sixty-eight degrees. Amazing, November fourth and sixty-eight degrees. She was glad she'd gotten out of the house. She wondered if there was anything she could do in the yard this fine warm day. She remembered seeing Trudy Wentis trimming her rose bushes a couple weeks earlier and she wondered if dogwood trees needing trimming before winter. It was a frivolous idea, she thought.
She decided then to get a lawn chair from the little tool shed at the back of the yard. She crossed the yard quickly, opened the tool shed door, scanned the inside. No lawn chairs. A riding mower, hedge clippers, a can of turpentine, but no lawn chairs. She rememberedâthe lawn chairs were in the cellar. "Best to keep the vinyl away from sub-zero temperatures," Miles had explained. Good, practical, understanding Miles.
She closed the tool shed door. She started for the house.
She stopped. Her breathing stopped. She heard a scream begin in a remote corner of her consciousness, where her fears lived.
The tall, dark-haired woman in the second floor windowâtheir bedroomâwas shaking her head slowly.
No
, she was saying.
No!
Janice felt the scream inside her begin to change, to metamorphize. And when, at last, it settled in her throat, and vaulted from her mouth, it became, "Who
are
you?! Who
are
you?!"
And the woman vanished.
"H
ello."
"Mr. Marsh?"
"Yes, this is John Marsh."
"You don't know me, Mr. Marsh. My name is Janice McIntyre. The editor of the local paper gave me your number."
"Yes?"
"I called him for some information about a fire that happened out here about fifteen years ago."
"'Out here'?"
"Yes, Granada. That's the new housing developmentâ"
"I know what it is, Mrs. McIntyre. You're calling about the fire at the Griffin house, aren't you?"
"Yes, I am. Actually, I'm calling about Mrs. Griffin."
"Rachel?"
"Yes."
"Why would you call about her, Mrs. McIntyre? She died in that fire. So did her husband."
"I know that, Mr. Marsh. I've seen the newspaper story. But what I really need to knowâ"
"Fifteen years, Mrs. McIntyre. Why don't we let them rest?"
"Could you describe her, Mr. Marsh? Could you describe Rachel Griffin for me?"
"Describe her? What in the hell for, Mrs. McIntyre?"
"I know it seems odd, Mr. Marsh, butâ"
"It seems kind of perverse, Mrs. McIntyre. Doesn't it seem kind of perverse?"
"Mr. Marsh, please try to understand. I've seen a woman around here. I've seen her in my houseâ"
"
Rest
, Mrs. McIntyreâthat's what Rachel Griffin needs. Rest." And he hung up.
Janice had been using the kitchen phone; she glanced now, uneasily, at the little breakfast nook. "Rachel?" she whispered. "Are you trying to tell me something, Rachel?"
She waited silently for only a few seconds. Then, in fear of an answer, she fled the house.
Fifteen Years Earlier
E
ven as she struggled out of sleep, Rachel knew the source of the acrid smell that filled her nostrils. She nudged Paul, asleep beside her. "Paul," she said aloud. "Wake up, Paul."
"It's too cold," he groaned.
She shook him. "Paul, wake up!"
He opened his eyes, raised his head a little. "What's wrong? What's that smell?" He sat up suddenly. "My God . . ." He swung his feet to the floor, stood, grabbed the doorknob tightly, yanked his hand back. He cursed.
Rachel scrambled out of bed.
"The doorknob's hot." Paul's voice was trembling. "It's the house, Rachel! It's on fire!"
T
immy Meade stroked the big, short-haired gray cat delicately, uncertain what its reaction might be. "Hi there, kitty cat. You got a name?"
The cat purred loudly, then lay down and rolled to its back, exposing its belly.
Timmy winced. Coagulated blood matted the cat's fur around the bottom of its rib cage. "Shit damn, cat!" He touched the long, narrow wound gently; it seemed fresh. The cat rolled away from his hand.
"Mom!" he called, turning his head toward the house. "Mom!"
Dora Meade appeared behind a sliding glass door. She pushed the door open slightly. "What is it?" she called.
"I got this cat out here, Mom, and it's hurt."
"Cat? What cat?" She opened the door and stepped out to the patio, where her son and the cat were. "That's a stray, Timmy." She made pushing motions in the air above the cat. "Shoo!" The cat continued to purr. "Shoo!" she repeated, and she prodded at it with her foot.
"It's hurt, Mom!" her son protested.
"It's a stray, Timothy, and it's probably diseased." She prodded it harder; the cat flipped suddenly to its feet, swiped at her ankle, and, moments later, vanished into the tall weeds at the perimeter of the yard.
At the same timeâin the small stand of woods west of Granada
"Y
ou hear 'em?" said Robin Graham quietly.
"Yeah," said his twin brother, Robert. "I hear 'em."
They were on a deer path, although, as they had agreed, it was really a path which had been made by "red Indians" who "for sure were watchin' and waitin' and you gotta be gosh darn extra awful careful 'round those red Indians." They had played the game for years, first in the hallways and elevators of their apartment building in Rochester, New Yorkâbefore they'd started going to schoolâthen on the railroad tracks, between parked railway cars, near their second home in Albany, then in the abandoned gravel pits just a mile from their third home in Webster, New York. This, they agreed, was by far the very best place to play the game. And so what if maybe they were getting a little too old for kids' games. Because here, in these woods, maybe there really were red Indians. There was something, sure enough. Something that moved, and laughed, and repeated the things you said. Like an echo. Make a noise like a red Indian and, presto, there it was, all around.
And sometimes, if you looked close enough, you could actually see them. If you blinked just right, or moved your head just right, there they were. For a second. Or a half second. The red Indians on the run. Whoopin' and hollerin' and gigglin'.
"I bet she's here somewhere," Robin said.
"Bet who's here?" Robert asked.
"The one I seen the other night. The one with the nice little boobs."
And the way the woods closed up around you, you could almost believe you'd gone back a thousand years, because there was no sky with jet trails in it, and no houses and no carsâonly the trees, and the dark, and the red Indians all around.
"You remember," Robin said. "I told you about her."
"I remember," Robert said.
"I'm gonna go lookin' for her tonight."
"No you ain't."
"I sure am. When you're asleep, so you can't tell Mom." He was whispering.
"I'll stay awake then. All night long." Robert was whispering, too.
"You do and I'll tell Mom about that magazine you got."
"What magazine?"
"You know what magazine."
"I burned that up. It was dumb."